a bleeding purple utah jazz blog

Bits from Randy Rigby Interview, 8/29

How often does someone in the organization receive outside interest?
I had phone calls earlier this year with people wanting to talk from other organizations to talk to Kevin O’Connor, and we said, “Thank you very much. Kevin O’Connor is under contract, and he’s happy and we’re happy.” And that’s what contracts are for. It, you know, so it happens on occasion. It’s happened on occasion with, you know, I have people wanting to talk with me about New York and being involved in some other aspects, and so it happens from time to time.

It’s kind of part of sports, but we’re, and that’s where contracts become important for us to kind of, to keep people in place. But at the same time, we’ve also said as an organization, if this gives the person a chance to really improve in their career, if that’s something that they would like to look at, and, and it’s good for them, and right, we don’t also want to stop them from progressing. If it’s a lateral move, that’s a different story.

Taking outside interest in Jazz personnel as a compliment
(A PhD in English or perhaps cryptology may be helpful in getting through this next bit.)

It speaks to your organization, and your programs, and the development that you’re doing with, with, really sports, not only players but also with your front office, and it, it’s a compliment, but at the same time, you can run a program, and, and at, at certain times it can really be a, a real distraction to you as an organization, and so I think it’s, you have to be sensitive.

As we were looking at actually talking with other organizations about candidates, you know, I had some very good friends that were owners of some other teams, that we had some names that we were wanting to at least explore, and when they came back and explained to me, “Hey, you know, due to some previous people who have taken us and we feel we’re already thin and we already have been entered into some agreements, with contractual agreements with these people, and we know this is a nice opportunity, but we have a contractual commitment that we, that is in place between us and that individual, we don’t feel like it’s, we want to open that door for you,” and I have to, I have total respect for them, and a, a great relationship, and, and it meant a lot when they said if anyone we would want to talk with it would be you, because of our relationships, you know that, that meant a lot, and I respected totally their decision to not allow further conversations about the individual. So that’s where I think it comes down to a lot of respect and in the league from their programs and their respect of our programs and, and our style.

Does the amnesty provision gall you?
Well, you know, the one thing that I am happy about, about the new amnesty deal. We were bothered about the old amnesty deal, because it, it came down six years ago, at really, at, at one minute before midnight, and all of a sudden it came in, and it was a one-time deal that was allowed that really helped reset a lot of big market teams and a lot helped them salvage them in how they handled some bad contracts. The one thing I am happy with now, it, it’s fair to say, any team can now get caught up that’s looked like a decent contract, and then it goes south…

I am happy now with the amnesty deal, that it’s not just a one-time deal that happens immediately. Now, it’s spread out over the length of the CBA, so the interesting thing is right, I believe the report I saw, currently 15 of the 30 teams have already used their amnesty, Utah Jazz not being one of them.

But it is nice for us to know in our back pocket if for some reason we do at some point cut a deal that isn’t work, then we can then pull out that amnesty card, where in the past it was just, you gotta use it right now, which rewarded the big markets who had spent hundreds of millions of dollars on poor contracts, and so they were rewarded for poorly running their organizations, whereas we had run our organization very well.

We were in a lot of ways we felt were being penalized for running good organ–a very lean, mean organization. So at least now on this new deal, we have a window saying, “OK, if we for some reason get into a bad deal, we can pull that card out at anytime in the next six years.” (1280)

On Dennis Lindsey and the Jazz’s GM search
Dennis’ name kept popping up. I did some Googling and learned a lot about him. (DN)